Raonic vs Dimitrov

This is one of the best matches from the 2nd round in Madrid between Milos Raonic from Canada and Grigor Dimitrov from Bulgaria.

Grigor is 4th in the world ranking, while Milos is 24th. I still don't think Milos reached the level before his injury, moreover he's a little bit overweighted and this will be a huge problem against player who loves being into rallies. The serve will help Milos maybe in most of his games, but this is not hard court and Grigor will have much more chances on return to break his opponent. I watched Milos against Nicolas Kicker today and wasn't impressed at all by the Canadian. The final result was 6:3 6:2 and Milos made a lot of aces which helped him, but the final result was not so much because of the good performance by Raonic than the awful by Nicolas Kicker. The Argentinian got wrong so many easy balls, his serve didn't work good with more double faults than aces and almost evertime his opponent faced a deuce situation Kicker made a bunch of mistakes and gifted the tough games to Raonic. Grigor also makes double faults and it's not so hard to be broken on clay, but he knows perfectly well how to use his chances to rebreak his opponents. Moreover, Grigor is really motivated when he knows that his opponent is a real challenge if he doesn't give his best and that's the reason I am sure Grigor will show his best tomorrow and is much closer to the win.

Girog has unexpectedly good results on clay. I thaught he will start worse than that and he will show his best in Madrid and then in Rome before RG. Grigor proved that clay is going to be closer and closer surface to his style during this season with his SF in Monte Carlo and QF in Barcelona. I know his weakest results are on this surface but he has everything to be extremely dangerous here, because he is good in rallies, he's also flexible and an excellent athlete. He can move well and if he improves his serve and stops making so much double faults he has the real chance to make something bigger in Paris at Roland Garros, but it depends on him. Grigor loves to play in Madrid and here he earned his biggest win in the career against Novak Djokovic in 2013, when the Serb was N1 in top top form. Last season he reached the 3rd round and was stopped by Dominic Thiem, second best during the clay season, in crazy 3-set match where Grigor missed a few match points and Dominic said that this win was the key to break to the final in Madrid against Rafa Nadal, if gave him so much confidence.

Milos wins during the season on hard and clay are against players close or way out of top 20(Kicker, Cecchinato, Catarina, Chardy, Ymer, Querrey, Schwartzman, Sousa, Daniel and Auger Aliassime). That's all for his season, nothing special, no wins against top players like Del Potro, Nadal, Federer, Zverev, Dimitrov, Thiem, Goffin..He's not consisitent and far away from his best and it will be really tough against a player who has 4 wins in 5 matches against him. Last years it was hard for Milos to take even a set against Grigor and I don't know if Dimitrov will win tomorrow in straight sets or in three, it depends a lot on his serve and the number of double faults.

I'm totally with Grigor and I believe he can reach at least QF defeating Raonic and then in the 3rd round Paire or Shapovalov. In the QFs he can potentially face Djokovic which will be perfect if it happens! Really expect something big from Grigor in Madrid, watched a video by him a few days ago and he said he is totally out of any injuries, relaxed after Monte Carlo and Barcelona and ready for something big in a place like Madrid, which he loves and brings him a lot of good memories!

Don't understand what tactic did Dimitrov really use in this match..For the first time in their matches Dimitrov played the whole 1st set 4/5 meters behind the baseline. It was hard for him to win even a point and he had to be broken in the end of the 1st set, lost it and just then started to play his style close to the baseline. In the second part of the third set he was far away from the baseline once again and lost the match..really hard to understand what was happening in his head. To use a tactic which doesn't work, change it with something much better, which won you the 2nd set and in the end to play the same way as in the 1st set. One word to describe that- STUPIDITY!

05/08/2018 - 20:31

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